


Everything Else Later

by magikfanfic



Category: Runaways (Comics), Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Ficlet, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 04:25:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13356441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: “I actually hate you right now. I’m considering making you my official arch-nemesis. I might make t-shirts. And badges.” Gert is standing there, glaring at him. Gert does that a lot, stands there, glares at him. She does it so much that you’d think Chase would be used to it by now, but it always makes his heart jump just a little to know that her attention is focused utterly and completely on him. Even if she is glaring. Even if she is saying mad things that most people would assume don’t bode very well for him.





	Everything Else Later

**Author's Note:**

> Just some fluffy little drabble for them. Weird mishmash of comic and TV canon. Not tied to anything else.

“I actually hate you right now. I’m considering making you my official arch-nemesis. I might make t-shirts. And badges.” Gert is standing there, glaring at him. Gert does that a lot, stands there, glares at him. She does it so much that you’d think Chase would be used to it by now, but it always makes his heart jump just a little to know that her attention is focused utterly and completely on him. Even if she is glaring. Even if she is saying mad things that most people would assume don’t bode very well for him. 

There’s probably something for him to learn regarding the difference between good attention and bad attention, but Chase doesn’t the time right now. And he’s always been of the opinion that any attention is good attention, especially when it doesn’t end with someone hitting him, which is how things always went with his dad. 

“Yeah?” He smirks. He can’t help it. She’s adorable when she’s standing in the middle of their room in the Hostel, dressed in plaid sleep shorts that are, as she says, entirely too short to see the light of day, and a tank top with a picture of what he thinks is Ada Lovelace on it. If someone had asked him who Ada Lovelace was six months ago, Chase would have pretended not to know, and he would have been really convincing. He’s always been good at that, pretending to be something other than what he is. There was a point in his life when he considered maybe being an actor, but his mother took him to one audition and the way some of those people looked at him made him uneasy, seemed like some kind of reflection of his father, and Chase never wanted to go back again. But he never forgot how to be someone else when needed, how to build the facade even if it always falls in front of Gert.

Gert is still glaring at him, her glasses almost on the tip of her nose, nearly falling right off, and her hair swept back and away from her face, which only helps him see the entirety of the glare as well as how it is not completely real. Other people don’t think Gert has tells. Other people think she’s just as mean as her bark, but it’s not true. Those people just never learned how to look, but Chase, well, Chase has been looking and watching and learning for most of his life. He’s been accused of not studying before, quite a bit in fact, but he was always studying Gert. Even when they were just two kids shouting at each other across a room while their friends pretended it wasn’t happening because who wants to get in the middle of that, he was studying her. Who wouldn’t want to? His girlfriend is the most amazing person on earth. His best friend is the smartest person in the universe as far as he’s concerned. Reed Richards and Tony Stark and Victor Stein, they can all suck it. It’s Gert. It’ll always be Gert.

So some people might be worried about the glaring and the arms crossed over her chest, tight, and the plant of her feet in that strange power stance, but Chase isn’t concerned. Not even a little bit. Because the left corner of her mouth is quirked up just slightly, her eyes behind her glasses are soft, and her right hip is forward just a little bit more, like an invitation for his hand to rest there. Gert Yorkes has so many tells, and he wonders whether all of them are just for him to notice. He’s fine with that. He’s great with that. If the world never knows what he has, then maybe they won’t be dicks and try to take it away. If he works hard enough, maybe he can be enough and Gert will stay. Forever. 

The bed is between them, her with her standing and glaring and him turned away from the workbench where he’s been fiddling with yet another broken piece of technology they’ve scrounged up from somewhere. Gert reads, and Chase tinkers. It’s what they do, it’s how they calm down. Still smirking, he gets up and then settles onto the bed on his knees, scoots closer to the edge where she is, his hands held out. “You got a slogan yet for all those banners and buttons and shirts?”

“I was just thinking of emblazoning your name across them.” She lifts one eyebrow. 

Success. He hums and does not lower his hands, wiggles the fingers at her, waiting. “Is that because you can’t think of anything or because utilizing your genius for that would be a waste of time?”

She moves her head so that the light will reflect off her glasses, hiding her eyes, which is how Chase knows he has her hook, line, and sinker. She has said he always will, but he worries. All he knows how to do sometimes is worry, but the same could be said of her. It’s better when they worry together. It’s best when they make the other forget how. “The latter, obviously.”

“Oh. Yes. Obviously.” He laughs. “How dense of me. How utterly dumb. How do you ever put up with my incessant, nonsensical rambling?” He’s starting to sound like her. It’s fine. He doesn’t mind, and Gert always looks pleased by it, as though it reminds her that he does listen to her, she is important to him. Of course she is. He doesn’t know how she could ever forget.

The tells slip into something else, something softer, and then her fingers are wound into his, and he pulls her to the edge of the bed where he can rest his face against the soft fabric of her tank top and she can run her fingers through his hair. “I don’t know,” she says, and her tone informs him that the game is not completely done. “Must be your face.”

He laughs into her stomach before looking up at her again, lips pulled into a pout that makes her chuckle before she can stop herself. “My face? This face? And just my face? We need to get your eyes checked. I don’t think your glasses are the right prescription anymore. I mean, have you seen,” he rolls a shirt sleeve up and flexes, “these guns?” Gert is giggling hard now, all previous attempts at serious having washed off of her like paint swirling down a drain. This is the other thing that people never see, Gert defenseless, Gert at peace. He reaches for the hem of his shirt to tug it up. “Or my abs? Want to count them? You can count them. I’ll wait. It’ll take awhile.”

Gert is holding his face in both of her hands, laughing, and it is the purest sound, it is the sweetest sound. Hell, he’d act like a fool forever if she would continue to giggle just like that. Not worried, not afraid, not bowed under the weight of too many responsibilities and too much going on. Just Gert. Just the woman he loves more than anything in the world. More than the world. 

“You’re silly,” she accuses him through chuckles, and he purses his lips again in an exaggerated fashion meant to keep her smiling, meant to entertain her. If he can lighten the load, he will. It’s the least he do, be the clown, make her smile. 

She smiles. She kisses him, and Chase can’t focus on anything other than the touch of her lips, and the small sounds that she makes when he settles his hands on her hips, pulls her closer. 

There is nothing in the world but them. There is no terrible world ending thing that exists beyond their door. There are no murdering parents out to find them. There is just this. There is just them. They can deal with everything else later.


End file.
